


Christmas Won't Be Christmas Without Any Presents

by executrix



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2786633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Clone Club pre-Christmas road trip--an alternative to "All Things Which Have Never Yet Been Done"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas Won't Be Christmas Without Any Presents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celaenos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/gifts).



> Written as a treat for celaenos, who wanted to see those four crazy kids hit the road. 
> 
> Quotations are from the first chapter of "Little Women."

_Jo does use such slang words!_ observed Amy, with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug

Sarah, asleep on Felix’s sofa, awoke (as so often) to pounding on the door. “Fucksticks,” she said, stopping herself from rolling off the edge, thanks to long practice. “Fee? Is someone trying to kill us?”

Felix, already wearing a Fitzgerald-era fox coat, a Dr. Who scarf, metallic olive leather drainpipe trousers, floral Doc Martens, and a lime-green sweater with an intarsia penguin on the front, stopped halfway through one cheek (applying rouge for a head start on a healthy winter glow).

“It’s Alison,” he said. He went to the table, and poured an imperial pint of coffee from the still-steaming French press, and handed it to Sarah. “I’m so excited!” He reconsidered. “That is, it’s supposed to be Alison. What with the door being opaque and all, it could be someone else. And most of the people we know do want to kill us, in which case I’m terrified. Cutting back on that should probably be a Clone Club new year’s resolution.”

Sarah yawned widely, then swished a mouthful of coffee around to cool it. “What are you excited about?” She checked her phone. There was a text from Cal: everything was fine, Kira enjoyed Santa’s Workshop.

“Alison’s taking me to the airport. Then she’ll swing around and pick you up, so get a shower—God knows how long it’ll be before you get another chance.”

“Airport.”

“Oh, just a puddle jumper. The kids will get a big kick out of it, it’s like ride foreplay. Alison’s paying me—at babysitter and not courtesan rates--to take the kids to that new theme park. Marvel’s StarkPark. Get them out of the way.”

“Well, why don’t they go with their awful father?”

“Donnie’s baby-sitting the garage.”

Sarah abandoned the quest for food in the refrigerator, and shuffled through the cupboards until she found a package of cheese straws. For a moment she contemplated sticking a couple of them in her nostrils, walrus-style, but she was hungry so she ate some instead. “Why do I need a shower, or, rather, why is she picking me up?”

 

“…and pack your things. Light, but versatile, maybe overnight, maybe a couple of days. Sestras only. You’re going to grab Cosima. Kidnapping is the new blackmail, you know.”

Sarah realized her bare feet were cold. She found a pair of thick woolly socks with red toes—potential sock monkey—and hopped into a pair of jeans. “Why didn’t anybody ask me? Or even tell me?”

“Well, Grumpy Cat, maybe because they thought you’d try to talk us out of it.”

“When did *I* become the voice of adult rationality?” Sarah said. “Fuck my life.”

_As young readers like to know ‘how people look’ we will take this moment to give them a little sketch of the four sisters._

Sarah’s phone rang. “ETA in five,” Alison said.

“No, that would be ETA IS five,” came a faint voice from behind Alison. Sarah zipped up her coat, fastened the snaps, and laced the hood closed. She grabbed her duffle bag and pounded down the stairs.

A gigantic SUV stopped in front of the door. Sarah squinted: yes, that was Alison driving, although it wasn’t her land yacht—it must be a rental, or stolen. Sarah climbed in, taking a moment to wonder when Alison had changed from Lawful to Chaotic…well, whatever she was. Cosima was in the back, lying down on a gurney, accompanied by an assortment of tubes, a portable oxygen tank, and a small square monitor that bleeped softly for a while, then shrieked until its battery ran out.

Helena bounced on the bench seat between the two captain’s chairs up front. “Holy mother of God, what are you wearing?” Sarah addressed the vision in starched white coif, magenta latex micro-mini, white stockings, and platform stilettos. 

“Was half-price, day after Halloween,” Helena said. “Very economical. Package says ‘sexy nurse.’ I think rubber will be good, practical, for bloods and bodily fluids, so I lift shop, but turns out, is no trouble.”

“If you’re going to steal it, it doesn’t matter if it’s half-price,” Sarah began. “Oh, never mind. But what wasn’t any trouble?”

“I just got one of the orderlies to put me in a wheelchair and take my IV poles down to the lobby,” Cosima said. “And, when Rachel bustled over, I told her to just let me go, her stats would look better if I died somewhere else.”

_“I detest rude, unladylike girls!” “I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!”_

“Don’t be silly,” Alison said, turning on the radio. “You’re not going to die.”

“Of course she will die,” Helena said. “She is human. Well, sort of human, in abomination way.”

“But she’s not going to die on *my watch,*” Alison said, dialing past scratches and interference. 

“Put on something else,” Sarah said. 

“’Driver gets to pick the music. Shotgun gets to shut his—or in this case her—piehole,’” Alison said. 

“That too. But I meant Helena should put on some clothes. I didn’t know where we were going—still don’t, actually—so I brought along some changes of clothes. And God knows they should fit any of us.”

“Well, except for Rachel,” Cosima said. “She’s what, a size two? Not that I’m objecting to the lack of running gun battles, but I don’t know why she wouldn’t just write down anything that makes the funders happy. She’s a suit, not a scientist. A size-two empty suit.”

“Where are we going? Or what are we doing?” Sarah asked.

“We’re saving Cosima!” Alison said. 

“How?” Sarah said. 

“There’s an experimental program I found on the Internet!”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “What could go wrong?”

“It’s very hush-hush,” Alison said. “It’s a small lab, you see. They don’t want the big companies finding out and stealing their research. We’re going to take Cosima there, and they’re going to cure her. It’s perfect. After all, ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’” and what could be a better present than the gift of Life?” She took her hands off the wheel again to make the air quotes.

“Ten and two, Alison, ten and two,” Sarah muttered. “What’s that a quote from? Are we playing Charades?”

“Little Women!” Alison said indignantly. “Didn’t you ever read it when you were young? We’re just like them.”

“God, no,” Sarah said. “I didn’t read anything when I was a kid. I thought anyone who read was pathetic. I’m not really sure that’s changed, sorry, Cosima.”

“I saw the movie,” Cosima said. “What’s her name, you know, the one that got busted, was really hot. Well, let’s see, there’s four of us here, check, I’m dying, check. One of them was an artsy snob, so noooo, that couldn’t have anything to do with us. Slightly butch writer, not exactly. Married this real old guy with an accent, but he was Gabriel Byrne so that was okay. And the snobby one married Christian Bale, so maybe if Big Dick Paul was rich, I could see the parallel.”

“Big Dick Paul is not a bale of Christians,” Helena said. “Is only one, if he is a Christian at all.”

“He played Jesus, Moses, and a serial killer,” Cosima said. “Religion in a nutshell!”

“Well, you should read it with Kira,” Alison said. “It’s just a lovely, sweet story about a family…”

“With an absent father figure who is so inadequate that no one even misses him,” Cosima said.

“About four sisters who adore each other and their Marmee, who models resistance to oppressive gender roles and appearance-based discrimination,” Alison said.

“Well, Mrs. S. went a ton on Marmite,” Sarah said. “Not feeling the similarities otherwise. I mean, unless there was a lot of gunrunning and human trafficking in the book.”

The involuntary serenade by Christmas music continued until the inescapable “Christmas Shoes” came into rotation, causing Cosima (who had heard it before) to laugh and Helena (who hadn’t) to weep, both hysterically. 

“My rubber is wet now,” Helena said tragically. 

“Take a t-shirt,” Sarah said. “In fact, put on my extra pair of jeans.” Cosima coughed convulsively. Sarah climbed into the back to hold up her head and give her some water from a bottle in the picnic cooler wedged between the two front seats. Sarah climbed back and re-fastened the seat belt.

Helena stood up, brandishing a tray as proudly as if it held the head of John the Baptist. “You should be proud,” Helena said. “Yours is best.” Neatly and symmetrically arranged on the tray were six soggy lumps of fabric of various colorations. They looked like weeping bricks. Sarah deduced that the water probably came from the melted ice in the picnic cooler wedged between the two captain’s chairs, and the other t-shirts must have been Alison’s changes of clothing. The tray was probably the lid. Sarah was stymied about why this had happened, even in present company.

Cosima struggled upward a little from the horizontal, trying to see. “Wha?”

“I see sign, on dive bar,” Helena said. “One hundred dollars prize. Wet t-shirt contest. We can use one hundred dollars, pay for gas.” 

“God, yes,” Cosima said. “This thing gets, like, three gallons to the mile. You have to keep filling it up. Like Helena.”

“Thanks for the reminder!” Alison said. Turning away from the steering wheel (Sarah said a Hail Mary), she used one and then both hands to open a cheery red cardboard box as Sarah wondered whether she had to grab the wheel. Alison unwrapped the holly-printed tissue paper. “I made Nanaimo bars!” 

Alison, realizing at last that she was probably steering with her knees, popped a bar into her mouth and put her hands back on the wheel. Sarah took one half-hearted bite, choking on the dialed-to-eleven sweetness, and sneaked it into the glove box, where it stuck to the .44 Magnum.

Helena ate four bars, which kept her quiet for a while. 

Alison didn’t trust the GPS, so Sarah got to use some of maps from the glove box. 

_It’s naughty to fret, but I do think washing dishes and keeping things tidy is the worst work in the world_

“It’s a bit of detour, but there’s a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant,” Alison said. “I’m going to take Helena there. Expand her culinary horizons a little. Sarah, if you could stay here with Cosima? Just in case of…problems. Take the Mag.”

“Leave the cannoli,” Sarah muttered.

“ We’ll get you a plate to take away. Well, a package, they don’t have plates of course, they eat with their hands, scoop up the food with a kind of fermented pancake.”

Sarah stared at her, appalled. “Yet another plan with which nothing could possibly go wrong. All right, all right. Get something to eat. I’ll hold the fort. Don’t worry about me. We’ll have to make a pit stop at some point, I’ll just get, I don’t know, a ham sandwich or something and some Cheezies.”

In the restaurant parking lot, Sarah watched her two sisters enter the restaurant, apparently without incident. She walked to the back of the van, crouched down next to Cosima, and took her hand.

“Are you OK with this…this…”

“Cockeyed caravan? Surprisingly, yes. It’s like an insane hospice program. Anything’s better than just waiting, you know? I’m doped up enough that nothing hurts too much, and I might as well die today or tomorrow or next week instead of two months from now, if it means Alison got to swoop in with her Jesus act and I get one last trip with you guys. And if somebody pulls up and shoots us, well, sorry because you’ve got something to lose but I don’t.” She squeezed Sarah’s hand. “I’m glad that my body—that fine feat of engineering by multi-national mad scientists—didn’t fall apart before I met you. I mean, you and Alison, you have children, so you know some of you will go on after you die.”

“I know Alison’s children are adopted,” Sarah said. “But Fee’s my brother as much as anyone with the same parents could be. So even having Kira, I feel like you’re all a part of me. Different parts of me. Even the ones who died already.”

“I’m glad I got to find out. I mean, I’m a scientist, I want to know things. I want to know the truth. Even if it’s ugly.”

“Do you think…anything happens after you die?” Sarah asked. “I mean, is Beth anyplace? Are we going to meet her? Or Katja, or Jennifer?” Cosima shook her head. “Me neither,” Sarah said. But Alison and Helena, they’re so sure.”

“Yeah, well, they’re also nuts,” Cosima said. 

“Usually, I’d be more active about…at least finding out where I’m going,” Sarah said. “But I don’t know. Either this feels OK or I’m just too tired to anything but just swing with it.” Sarah kissed Cosima on the forehead and went back to the front and fiddled with the radio, trying to find something other than Christmas carols.

Alison and Helena returned, replete. Alison, who had providently brought spray bottles of environmentally friendly cleanser, gloves, and recycled rags, supervised the forensic detailing of the van. The spray bottles dealt easily with the splashes on Helena’s dress, less so with the food stuck to her face. Alison scrubbed away with a wet wipe, which gave Sarah a sharp pang of missing Kira. She checked her phone: three more texts from Cal, all cheerful. Alison called Felix and got a rundown on the exciting lines they had stood on at StarkPark.

“A little birdie told me someone is flying in from Frankfurt for a job interview,” Alison said.

 _Dear me! How happy and good we’d be, if we had no worries!” said Meg, who could remember better times._

Alison phoned ahead, and got the code to open the door of the low-slung, wide building near the gate of the industrial park. “It’s Suite 109!” she called as she bustled down the hall and Sarah and Helena pushed the gurney. 

There was a doorbell set into the white enameled door, beneath a name tag (“Medusa Institute” and a line drawing of a woman with an open, shouting mouth and a multi-snake coiffure).

A small woman with deep-set, compelling eyes, curly hair, and beestung lips opened the door. Beneath her starched white lab coat a pale dress showed, printed with a riot of roses. “We don’t mind cleaning up after Dyad’s mistakes,” she said, in a honeyed alto. “Now, what’s that saying? ‘The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer’?” Well, curing the dead takes a little while. The dying? We do that right away.” 

The taller, slim woman behind her nodded.


End file.
